Thursday, December 6, 2012

Louse dream of buying themselves a wig, fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and I, (to use a term coined by Yago S. Cura) poor “fútbol cretin” turned poet still dream of playing a World Cup alongside fútbol’s biggest names.

In Odas a Fútbolistas, Yago S. Cura and Abel Folgar compose a cycle of humorous odes (with illustrations by Chaz Folgar and Martha Duran-Contreras) that pay tribute both to the sport’s greatest players and to the Wikipedia-age fan that recreates the dazzling virtuosity of those players through YouTube videos and yes, also, by writing celebratory odes. The writing of poetry is, after all, the closest one can get to playing true fútbol and playing fútbol is the closest one can get to writing true poetry.

About This Blog

I’d like to reflect on the title for this blog: “granma for poetry.” Why granma people will wonder? Fidel Castro’s assault on the Moncada barracks on July 26th of 1953 was a military debacle, there is no denying this—at best it was an act of blind faith. Three years later Castro along with Che Guevara and eighty-something other locos exiled in Mexico would sail for Cuba on the now famous yacht christened “Granma.” Here was another grand failure—another mad leap of faith. Of the eighty-something revolutionaries only twelve would survive to witness the triumph of the revolution. Three years would separate the sailing of the Granma to the culmination of the possible and more than possible, very real triumph of the Cuban revolution; proving that acts of madness, blind leaps of faith—onslaughts against the impossible make the unfeasible attainable.
“Granma for poetry” is another such leap of faith, a creative assault against the sterility of the impossible. It is an open letter, an invitation for collaboration, a call for other artists and poets to get on board the Granma, and to undertake on this hallucinating journey.